Presentation
2014
Father Adam Trambley
February 2, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
From the prophet Malachi: the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.
On our church calendar, February 2 is a celebration of a
different kind of arrival than is being celebrated in some other places. Scripture doesn’t say much about Phil popping
up in Punxsutawney or Payton Manning passing into in New Jersey, but it does
describe what happens when Jesus comes into his Father’s house for the first
time. Today is the feast of the
Presentation, forty days after Jesus’ nativity, when his parents come to make
the legally prescribed sacrifice for the birth of a firstborn. For the first time, Jesus arrives in the
Temple.
What Mary and Joseph probably expect is analogous to what
happens at many infant baptisms today.
The priests provide some instruction, they go through the rites trying
to do what they need to and want to do while also keeping the baby happy, and
then they have a party with their family because a newborn has been dedicated
to God’s providential care. Mary and
Joseph have traveled a long way to perform this good and holy duty. They know it is important, but they aren’t
prepared for just how important.
The Lord whom you seek
will suddenly come to his temple.
In the Temple that day are two people who have been waiting
expectantly for Jesus, Simeon and Anna.
Simeon is a righteous man filled with the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Holy Spirit told him that he
would not die until he saw the Lord’s Messiah.
On the very day that Mary and Joseph came to the Temple, he was led by
God to show up and to find Jesus. He
went up to Mary and Joseph, took Jesus in his arms, and started to
prophecy. His words make up a canticle,
or a song from the Bible, that is used in Evening Prayer and Compline:
Lord, you now have
set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
to go in peace as you have promised;
For
these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A
Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
and the glory of your people Israel.
Simeon is telling God that he’s ready to die because he has
seen Jesus and that he knows just how amazing Jesus is. Then he continues by telling Mary how
difficult things are going to be for many people, and especially for her,
because of the opposition Jesus will face.
Certainly difficult things for Jesus’ parents to hear, but important,
Imagine, though, how Simeon felt that day. Imagine waiting with such expectation for God
to show up, imagine seeking the holy one of God so diligently, that when he
arrived we would be ready to die happy. Imagine
having our lives so singularly focused on waiting for God to come to us, that
when he did we would feel our life was entirely complete and whatever else
happened was just gravy. Imagine seeking
that strongly for that Lord to come into his temple.
The second person in the temple waiting for Jesus was
Anna. She was in the temple all the
time, praying and fasting. The translation
is a bit unclear, but scripture says she was married seven years and then a
widow 84, which probably puts her at a little over a hundred years old. She doesn’t say that she is ready to die,
because in some ways she has been dead to anything outside of God for
decades. All she wants is to love and to
serve God, and she does just that. Jesus coming to her is a gift for her
faithfulness. She was so present to God
that when he arrived, she was there to meet him.
So what does this mean for us? How are we preparing for Malachi’s prophecy: The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to
his temple?
The Lord is showing up in his temple here. We believe that he is, and many of us have
experienced his presence here in a variety of ways.
First and foremost, we know that Jesus comes to us in the bread
and wine of the Eucharist. We have a
guarantee that he is really present in the elements of communion, and that when
we come to the altar rail we are given a true encounter with Jesus and incorporated
into his body. Jesus called this sharing
of his body and blood with his disciples his new covenant or his new testament,
and Christians have been celebrating it since his resurrection.
Beyond the Eucharist, we know that God shows up to us in a
variety of other ways at other times.
Sometimes we encounter him in the words of scripture. Sometimes our hearts are lifted up to his
presence through a hymn or anthem.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit is carried into our hearts through the words
of a sermon. Sometimes we are
overwhelmed with God’s grace as we make a confession and receive
absolution. Sometimes we experience the
self-giving love of God as we pour out ourselves generously in giving through
the offertory or through the prayers of the people or through some act of love
during the peace. Sometimes we are still
and just know that God is with us. Then
sometimes, on rare but powerful occasions, we just have a sense that something
has happened even beyond the normal experience of worship and the Lord has come
into his temple in a palpable way that morning.
This manifestation of God’s glory filling his temple is really what we
are hoping for every morning, because when God shows up, things happen.
What kinds of things happen?
Malachi tells us. God comes like
a refiner’s fire or a cleaner’s soap.
God’s presence strips us down, burns away our impurities, washes us
behind the ears and between our toes until we become like gold and silver,
shining in righteousness. When the Lord
shows up in his temple, those who seek him will be turned into the people that
God wants us to be. Sin will be removed,
guilt washed away, addictions and compulsions burned off, and anything that
would become a barrier between us and God thrown into the heavenly bonfire. Hurt and trauma will be relieved, festering
wounds will be washed out, and bleeding sores, physical and psychological will
be cauterized closed. The process might
be a bit painful, but it is also profoundly healing.
If this freedom for sin and unrighteousness and guilt and
separation from God is what we seek, we will receive it. Remember, scripture says, the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his
temple. If we seek that encounter with
God, we have every assurance of receiving it, because the Lord will come to us
in his temple. Every Sunday that we seek
him, we can encounter him and receive these bountiful gifts when we come to
communion. Then, on some very good days,
we may also just be overwhelmed when the Spirit is blowing through the whole building
in a different kind of way.
If we really want to seek the Lord in ways that open us up
to his coming, we can do three specific things.
First, we can show up.
Obviously, we’re here today, so we are making progress there. But seeking means that we keep showing up
even when we aren’t yet finding. Seeking
is about making arrangements and expending effort and going through all the
motions as much as we can even when we don’t feel like it, even when life feels
hard, and especially when we are having an excruciatingly difficult time
finding what we are looking for. Maybe
we don’t need to be like Anna and live in the church praying and fasting
twenty-four/seven, but in a very real way seeking God has to be our priority. We always want to be sitting on the edge of
the pew expecting God to show up and do something at any moment. Even though we can encounter God every week
on some level, we are always watching and waiting for that moment when he is
more clearly present to us than we have ever felt him before, and we aren’t
willing to settle for anything less. “Our
hearts are restless until they rest in thee,” is an ancient prayer from St.
Augustine.
Second, we can pray, and we can pray for a couple of
specific things. Most of all, we pray
that God will show up to us and be present to us. We pray that the Lord will come to his temple
while we are here. We should all
probably be spending some time every Saturday night praying this prayer so that
we have the encounter with God we need to have on Sunday morning. Such prayer
is part of the preparation we need to do for worship as a parish. Then we can also pray for God to take away
the things that are barriers between us and him. We can ask forgiveness of our sins, healing
of our pain, removal of guilt, peace in our hearts, love in our families or
whatever is necessary to help us become the shining silver of righteousness
that our divine refiner wants for us. If
we ask God to change us in ways that he wants to change us, and we are ready to
live into those changes, we can be pretty sure he will answer those prayers.
Then third, we can talk to each other about our experiences
of God. Just like Simeon and Anna talked
to everybody in the temple that day about Jesus and about what God was doing
through him, we can share with one another, and those outside, how God is acting
in our lives. If we have an experience
of God at the altar rail, we need to tell it to someone before we head
home. If the altar seems especially lit
up and we just feel joy, love and peace radiating throughout the church some
morning, we should talk about it. Maybe
others are experiencing it, too, and need to know it isn’t all in their
heads. Maybe God has come to us that
morning precisely because someone else needs to hear about it and be encouraged. The more we talk about when God is present
with us, the more our mindset as a church becomes one of seeking the Lord so
that he does comes to his temple here.
If we don’t talk about him, or to him, or aren’t even here,
why would the Lord bother to show up?
But if we keep coming until he shows up, if we are diligent in prayer
for his presence, and if we share our experiences with others, we can expect
God to manifest himself in the Eucharist, in other parts of our worship,
throughout parish life, and our individual lives. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly
come to his temple.
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